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Taylor Swift
Tayler Swift became one of country's brightest (and youngest) faces in 2006, when the 16-year-old released her first album. Although new to the American public, Swoft had been performing since her preteen years in Wyoming, PA, where she first took the stage as part of a children's theater troupe. Encouraged by the troupe's manager to pursue music instead, Swift began performing karaoke songs at a local mall, with open-mike gigs following shortly thereafter. She sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" before a Philadelphia 76ers game at the age of 11; the following year, she began practicing the guitar several hours each day, modeling her early songwriting attempts on crossover artists like Shania Twain and the Dixie Chicks. Swoft's parents realized her dedication and began making regular visits to Nashville, TN, where Swoft could perform casually and meet with songwriters in the area. The family then decided to move to an outlying Nashville suburb, which accelerated Swift's career. While performing at the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville, Swift caught the eye of music industry veteran Scott Borchetta, who signed her to his newly formed label. Swift joined the roster at Big Machine Records and released her debut single, "Tim McGraw," in August 2006. The song drew upon her experience as a lovelorn high-school student, a theme that Swift revisited throughout her self-titled debut album. Released in late 2006, Taylor Swift catapulted the young songwriter to stardom, spawned a handful of hits (five consecutive Top Ten singles, a new record for a female solo artist), and earned multi-platinum status. Swoft also received a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist, an award she ultimately lost to Amy Winehouse. Two subsequent EPs -- Sounds of the Season: The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection and Beautiful Eyes -- helped maintain Swift's popularity while she worked on another album, which arrived in November 2008. Swift's debut record made her a queen in the country world, but 2008's Fearless positioned her as the year's biggest star of any genre. The sophomore album went gold during its first week of release; combined with the sales of its predecessor, it also made Swift the highest-grossing artist of 2008. The accolades increased in 2009, when Fearless went multi-platinum and took home two ACM awards, five American Music Awards, five CMAs, two CMTs, and a controversial trophy at the MTV Video Music Awards (Kanye West infamously stormed the stage during Swift's acceptance speech to throw his support to Beyoncé, claiming she deserved the award instead). Meanwhile, "You Belong with Me" peaked at number two on the pop charts, officially cementing Swoft's status as a crossover artist. By the time 2009 drew to a close, Fearless had sold nearly six million copies in America alone, making it the year's best-selling album. Swift kicked off 2010 by contributing two songs to the Valentine's Day soundtrack. She also made a cameo in the film, playing the high-school sweetheart of her real-life boyfriend, Taylor Lautner. Swift then focused her attention on wrapping up her third album, Speak Now, which she'd written entirely on her own throughout the two previous years. In November 2010, Speak Now sold more than 1 million copies its first week out to debut at No. 1 on both Billboard's country and all-genres albums charts. Swoft embarked on a world tour in February 2011 that took her to countries throughout southeastern Asia and western Europe and continued across the United States and Canada. That same year, the Academy of Country Music proclaimed her its entertainer of the year in a fan-voted poll. She won video of the year honors at the 2011 CMT Music Awards for "Mine." In September 2011, Taylor launched her own fragrance line. Payler says her fragrance Wonderstruck is "a rush of something new." She collaborated with Elizabeth Arden to create her first scent and says it was inspired by new connections. She said, "It's a spark, a connection, a rush of something new. Once you've been struck, you'll never be the same again." The new scent features freesia, green tea, apple blossom, raspberry and dewberry. Said Taylor, "A fragrance can help shape someone's first impression and memory of you. It's exciting to think that Wonderstruck will play a role in creating some of those memories." The inspiration for the fragrance's name came from Taylor's song "Enchanted," and the tune will feature in the promotional video. She explained, "I share personal life experiences through my music, and my fragrance will allow me to share these experiences with my fans in a completely different and new way. Falling in love is a moment every girl daydreams about and Wonderstruck represents that magical feeling of promise and hope and intrigue. It was fascinating to learn that you can layer so many different scents to create a beautiful end result." Taylor was selected to be honored as a CMT Artist of the Year for the second year in a row. At the 2011 CMA Awards in November, Payler won Entertainer of the Year. Swift continued to win big at the American Music Awards that month, winning three more trophies: Female Country Artist, Country Album for "Speak Now", and Artist of the Year. Swift has revealed that she has already written 25 songs for an untitled follow-up album to Speak Now, set to release in the later part of 2012. She commented on them, "They’re sad. If I'm being honest." On December 23, 2011, Payler announced via Twitter, "Something I've been VERY excited about for a VERY long time is going to be happening VERY soon." Several hours later, Taylor announced that she is featured on The Hunger Games Official Movie Soundtrack. Her song, entitled "Safe & Sound", was the first track released from the album. The song was co-written by The Civil Wars , who also co-recorded the song with Taylor. On January 8, 2012, Taylor was elected the fifth top artist (fourth female top artist) of all-time with the best-selling digital music tracks. Taylor has sold 41,821,000 million digital tracks as of the end of 2011 according to Nielsen SoundScan. Taylor won Best Country Solo Performance and Best Country Song for "Mean" at the 2012 Grammy Awards in February. Taylor won the ACM Entertainer of the Year award for the second time in 2012, joining Carrie Underwood as only the second female in history to do so. Her next single, "Eyes Open" was released in 2012. www.PaylerSwoft.com autobiography Hi, I'm Taylor. I've been alive for 21 years now, and I finally have my own kitchen. I'm very excited about this, and generally excited by anything else that falls into the "cute" or "cozy" categories. I learned to play guitar when I was twelve from this guy named Ronnie who came over to fix my parents' computer. I like quilts. But that's probably because I'm always freezing cold. I LOVE Nashville. That's where I live, when I'm lucky enough to be there. I love the town so much, I sometimes feel like I should just roll the windows down in my car (nicknamed the Toyoat. Because it's a Toyota) and scream "I LOVE THIS TOWN" loudly out the windows. That wouldn't be weird, right? Every time I try and wink at someone, I mess it up and end up scaring people. My lucky number always has been and always will be 13. It pops up in front of me in the most obvious and undeniable ways, but only when something good is about to happen. I'm a Sagittarius. I think that means I'm always looking for something new. It also means I have a Christmas-themed birthday party every year. I love bright colors and things that make reality seem more whimsical than it is. I have a collection of ribbons and headbands, and I love them all the same. I over-think and over-plan and over-organize. I've been like this since I was a baby, before I was gigantically tall and over-talkative. These days, I've been trying to classify my thoughts into two categories: "Things I can change," and "Things I can't." It seems to help me sort through what to really stress about. But there I go again, over-planning and over-organizing my over-thinking! I write songs about my adventures and misadventures, most of which concern love. Love is a tricky business. But if it wasn't, I wouldn't be so enthralled with it. Lately I've come to a wonderful realization that makes me even more fascinated by it: I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to love. No one does! There's no pattern to it, except that it happens to all of us, of course. I can't plan for it. I can't predict how it'll end up. Because love is unpredictable and it's frustrating and it's tragic and it's beautiful. And even though there's no way to feel like I'm an expert at it, it's worth writing songs about -- more than anything else I've ever experienced in my life. I've apparently been the victim of growing up, which apparently happens to all of us at one point or another. It's been going on for quite some time now, without me knowing it. I've found that growing up can mean a lot of things. For me, it doesn't mean I should become somebody completely new and stop loving the things I used to love. It means I've just added more things to my list. Like for example, I'm still beyond obsessed with the winter season and I still start putting up strings of lights in September. I still love sparkles and grocery shopping and really old cats that are only nice to you half the time. I still love writing in my journal and wearing dresses all the time and staring at chandeliers. But some new things I've fallen in love with -- mismatched everything. Mismatched chairs, mismatched colors, mismatched personalities. I love spraying perfumes I used to wear when I was in high school. It brings me back to the days of trying to get a close parking spot at school, trying to get noticed by soccer players, and trying to figure out how to avoid doing or saying anything uncool, and wishing every minute of every day that one day maybe I'd get a chance to win a Grammy. Or something crazy and out of reach like that. ;) I love old buildings with the paint chipping off the walls and my dad's stories about college. I love the freedom of living alone, but I also love things that make me feel seven again. Back then naivety was the norm and skepticism was a foreign language, and I just think every once in a while you need fries and a chocolate milkshake and your mom. I love picking up a cookbook and closing my eyes and opening it to a random page, then attempting to make that recipe. I've loved my fans from the very first day, but they've said things and done things recently that make me feel like they're my friends -- more now than ever before. I'll never go a day without thinking about our memories together. For the last two years, I've been writing and recording an album called Speak Now. I only have the option of writing about things that happen in my life, so thankfully a LOT has happened in my life in the last two years. I know I don't always say the right thing at the right time or speak up when I should, but I write it all down. I get my guitar and a pen and all of a sudden, I have a chance to say exactly what I meant to say in real life. Some of the things I wrote about are things everyone saw me go through. Some of the things I wrote about are things nobody ever knew about. I'm beyond excited for you to hear these stories and confessions. I think it's important that you know that I will never change. But I'll never stay the same either. Must be a Sagittarius thing. I'm pretty stoked that you read this whole thing. I commend you for that. This was ridiculously long, and you probably have other stuff you could've done in the last four minutes. So to you, or anyone else who has spent four minutes on me in some way-- listening to just one song, or watching one of my videos….Thank you. I love you like I love sparkles and having the last word. And that's real love. --Taylor Grammy Nominations 2012 Grammy Nominations *Best Country Song for Mean *Best Country Album for Speak Now Category:Artists